What book comes to mind as impacting you the most during your time at Dartmouth, and why? When we asked this year's graduating library student workers that question, the results were as unique and special as they are. In this exhibit, we highlight 13 of the 28 students who submitted selections, with some sharing what their chosen book means to them. Sometimes intimate and personal, other times philosophical or pragmatic, their words offer you a peek into their world, reflecting their time at Dartmouth.
Empower
In December 1951, Evelyn and Vilhjalmur Stefansson made their way to Dartmouth with three railroad car-sized trucks containing a vast “polar library” in tow. Soon after establishing the Northern and Polar Studies Program at Dartmouth and adding the Arctic collection to Baker Library, Dartmouth sponsored the Stefanssons' travels to Greenland to collect as much material about Greenland and by Greenlandic authors as possible. What they amassed, in partnership with Greenland administrators and Denmark, would become valuable research and teaching material still used to this day.
What do I care more about, love or money? What about my parents’ expectations? Am I comfortable with all these social roles I have to play? What will happen to my reputation if I make the wrong decision? When does my privacy become creepy secrecy? Should I stay within the bubble, or strike out toward the horizon?
If these challenges ring a bell for you, you’re either a Dartmouth student, or you’re a character in a Jane Austen novel.
And the envelope, please! We were thrilled to roll out the red carpet for the inaugural Open Scholarship Commitment Award for Reproducible Research (OSCARRs) in February to celebrate community members who represent the best of reproducible research. The award spotlights Dartmouth research projects that embody the essence of reproducible research and open scholarship.
We are awash with data. Eighty percent of that data is unstructured, and that number is growing between 55 and 65% annually. Case in point, in 2022, 500 hours of video content were uploaded to YouTube every minute. Much of this unstructured data is text or “natural language” data, and accounts for approximately three-quarters of all recorded digital data. “Text” includes, but is by no means limited to, websites, blogs, social media posts, research papers, news articles, and transcripts.
In partnership with Rauner Special Collections Library - and with the help and expertise of Instrument Core Facility Manager Paul Defino and Instrument Specialist Chris Snyder of the Chemistry Department - senior lecturer Jenny Lynn is embarking on an exciting scholarly investigation.
Dartmouth Libraries has a rich tradition of library and community-curated exhibits. This Winter Term, we debuted four unique exhibits, each demonstrating what one might discover about a “place,” and the power and allure of it. On view until mid-March, these exhibits invite you to discover artful, historical, social, intellectual, and cultural narratives within each.
Are you curious how it feels to meticulously sift and sort through the personal and professional ephemera of a long-dead Dartmouth alum? In Kira Parrish-Penny’s ‘24 evocative article for Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, she offers a peek inside the experience. Kira describes, with candor and the intimacy of a would-be friend or relative, the hypnotic experience of getting to know a stranger (though, never really knowing them).
Have you ever wondered how some of the most bespoke, highly specific, and poignant sessions come to be taught at Rauner Special Collections Library? Curiosity and collaboration. Another factor is just how many people contribute to the process — even when separated by distance and time. How?
More than 1,000 days into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, resistance to the war still buzzes across Dartmouth. Spearheading these efforts are two Ukrainian professors, Victoria Somoff, associate professor in the recently renamed East European, Eurasian, and Russian Studies department, and Lada Kolomiyets, visiting professor, at Dartmouth.